


Tangled Up in Blue

by GrayJay



Series: The Way Things Break [2]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Road Trip, Sequel, Summers Brothers, Unrequited Love, songfic kind of i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 09:33:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7262554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrayJay/pseuds/GrayJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The well-thumbed volumes of Ginsberg he inherited from Darwin are equal parts explicit and opaque, twenty years out of date.</em>
</p><hr/><p>In which Alex keeps on keeping on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tangled Up in Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teaberryblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/gifts).



It hardly even registers the first time he hears it, or the first dozen. It’s not until that summer, driving through Wisconsin, that Alex even notices the lyrics; and then, it’s only because Scott is half humming along under his breath.

The next time the song comes on the radio, Alex recognizes it. Scott’s asleep in the passenger seat, so it’s just Alex and Dylan and miles of highway stretching on ahead, and he misses the turnoff for 94 and has to backtrack all the way to Tomah.

*

He’s trying not to think about it, but the goddamn song seems to be on the radio every time he turns it on. And Scott likes Dylan; and fuck, _Alex_ likes Dylan; and if he starts changing the station every time, Scott’s going to want to know why, and Alex will have to tell him something.

And the thing is: Alex isn’t even sure what to tell himself.

*

They stop in Chinook for gas. There’s a rack of postcards by the register, and Alex flips through until he finds one that’s nothing but the big Montana sky. He borrows a pen to scrawl on the back--

_Hey, Bozo._  
_Look at that all that blue. You’d fit right in._  
_A_

\--and does his best not to think about the aching rasp of Dylan’s voice.

*

Scott’s asleep again the next time it comes on, on the way out of Missoula. They’re off the map now--the only real plan is to drive west until they can’t, then follow the coast south. It’s just shy of midnight by the dashboard clock, and Alex is pushing it as far and hard as he can tonight, maybe all the way to the Pacific.

He almost changes the station when the song starts, doesn’t know why the hell he _doesn’t_. By now, he knows it well enough to sing along under his breath. And maybe it’s the weirdness of the day, the decision to head west instead of north to Anchorage; or maybe it’s the postcard; but this time it hits him so hard he can’t ignore it anymore, reaches straight into his chest and _grabs_ and _twists_.

“ _Like it was written in my soul from me to you_ ,” Dylan sings, and Alex can’t fucking breathe, barely manages to get the Dart onto the shoulder in time to drop his forehead to the wheel and sob silently until his eyes are burning like they’re full of sand.

Scott wakes up as they’re pulling back onto the road. “You okay?” he asks Alex groggily.

“Yeah,” Alex tells him. “I’m good.” They’re almost out of range of the station, but through the static, he can hear something melancholy and acoustic--Pink Floyd, maybe, he thinks.

He switches the radio off.

*

Their second night in San Francisco, Scott stays in reading, and Alex heads out on his own.

He’s not going anywhere in particular, just wandering, hands in his pockets, humming until he realizes where the snatch of melody stuck in his head comes from and clams up.

He’s not going anywhere in particular.

He’s not.

_He’s not._

He wouldn’t know where to go, even if he wanted to. The well-thumbed volumes of Ginsberg he inherited from Darwin are equal parts explicit and opaque, twenty years out of date, and it’s not like he’s ever really considered--

Alex wonders, sometimes, what would have happened if Darwin had survived. Whether they’d have ended up somewhere like this. Whether they could have walked down the street holding hands. They never had in New York, not even in the Village.

He buys a pack of cigarettes at a bodega, lights one on the palm of his hand, and lets it burn down without bothering to smoke it, leaned up against a lamppost, watching couples walk by.

*

It's not that Alex can't admit to himself that he's in love with Hank, so much as that he can’t figure out whether it’s Hank he’s in love with, or just the idea of someone who’s hard to hurt.

*

“Did you like San Francisco?” Alex asks Scott, as they’re pulling back on to the highway.

“Yeah,” says Scott. Alex isn’t sure what Scott’s been getting up to, only that he’s usually been the first one back. “You?”

“Yeah,” says Alex. “It was okay.”

“We could stay,” Scott offers, and Alex wonders how much he’s figured out, how much he’s noticed.

“Nah,” says Alex. San Francisco feels too soothing, too easy. Alex doesn’t trust easy, doesn’t trust himself not to tear through it like a pipe bomb; and he doesn’t want to watch one more thing he wants crumble and burn.

“What now?” Scott asks.

“Dunno,” says Alex. “Keep on keeping on, I guess.”

*

They swing through LA just to say they’ve been there, and stop to pick up a new set of road maps on the way out of town. Scott spreads them out across the hood of the car, and digs his ballpoint out of the glove compartment to plot a route back to Westchester.

“Vegas?” Alex asks Scott, when he sees where the first line leads.

Scott blanches. “If you want, I guess?”

“Not if you paid me,” says Alex. Even LA was too bright and too loud. He had bought a postcard with a photo of James Dean smirking at a bar and carried it in his pocket for half an hour before crumpling it up and dropping it in the trash in the gas station john.

“ _Thank God_ ,” says Scott. He skips his pen south at Denver to circumvent Nebraska, and Alex doesn’t say anything, just nudges Scott’s shoulder. Scott nudges back, and flashes a forced half smile.

Funny, Alex thinks, how the two of them can go home and keep running away at the same goddamn time.


End file.
